Silver Coinage Under the Emperor Nero

Transcription

1 DEBASEMENT OF THE Silver Coinage Under the Emperor Nero BY T. LO UIS COMPARETTE, Ph. D. NEW YORK 1914 V

2 JL ONE HUNDREDS COPIES REPRINTED FROM THlE AMoERICAN JOURNAL OF N UMISAFATIUS VOLUME XLVII... "."" " " " "

3 DEBASEMENT OF THE SILVER COINAGE UNDER THE EMPEROR NERO. BY T. LOUIS COMPARETTE, PH. D. The paucity of extant records pertaining to the coinage of Rome during the first century of the empire makes it very difficult to reach an understanding of the many changes which the coins themselves disclose took place in that period, extending from the first issue of gold at Rome by Julius Caesar to the reign of Nero, or between B. C. 49 and A. D. 62, the probable date of important legislation in the principate of the latter emperor. This may be accounted for largely by the fact that readers of the historians and other writers were so completely removed from participation in the affairs of government that important historical facts regarding legislation and administration did not interest them. Government had become a personal affair and history took on the color of personal gossip. But the lack of records may also be due, and probably is chiefly due, to the fact that the alterations in the coins were of purely administrative origin, and thus there were no vital legislative enactments to record. However, currency matters must have frequently occupied the attention of the senate and imperial council during the first century of the empire; for the new imperial coinage laws would certainly require numerous modifications to adjust the currency to the needs of an empire whose far-flung dominions presented the greatest diversity of trade and commerce, and whose local coinages had to be taken into consideration by the framers or reformers of the imperial system. And such normal conjectures as to what would probably happen are in various ways confirmed by the evidence of extant coins and apparently also by the fate of the local provincial mints, which in the western provinces, and in the cities of Africa, were soon closed - none of these continued their bronze coinage after the principate of Claudius. Briefly stated, the chief changes in the Roman coinage in the period above mentioned were a reduction of the weight of the aureus from 1/4o to 1/45 of a pound, or from about to approximately grams, making a decrease of nearly 12% in its value; and in the reign of Nero

4 the silver denarius which hitherto had been kept very nearly the original weight of isi of a pound, or 3.90 grams, was reduced to 1/96 of a pound or 3.41 grams, and its value still further reduced by the intentional introduction of a base alloy of approximately 15% the total weight. In the case of the gold coinage the reductions took place gradually, we are informed by Pliny, (N. H. XXXIII, 3, 47), for reasons not now known with certainty. The view of Mommsen, and of others, that the alterations in the gold coins indicate a misuse of the mint for illegal profits does not entirely satisfy; and it seems much more plausible that the gradual shifting of the value of gold to a higher figure reveals frequent efforts to meet the exigencies arising from the many-sided currency situation. For it will be recalled that the imperial currency system was established with a four-metal standard, coins of gold, silver, orichalcum (brass) and bronze, all being of unlimited legal tender and all receivable for public dues. The enormous gold coinage of Caesar in B. C. 49 had flooded the market with the yellow metal and produced a violent disturbance of the long-established ratio of value between gold and silver, which dropped from 1 to 12.5 to about 1 to 9. The long period of the ruinous civil wars and interrupted commerce was not adapted to scientific currency reforms, and the unsettling produced by the Caesarian gold coinage must have re-echoed long afterward in the Via Sacra. Yet changes were made rather early, and very likely intended to correct the errors of the system, for some of the aurei of Augustus were struck at the reduced rate of 42 to the pound, and it may be well doubted if the new master of Rome would sanction what would have been virtually a fraudulent policy to assist the fiscus at the expense of the people and that, too, just at a time when the emperor was using every means to imbue the minds of the Romans with the belief in the superiority of the new order of government and the righteousness of his own policies. Those who are acquainted with the prolonged discussions and recurrent legislation which bimetalism has caused in modern times, especially in the United States, will be rather inclined to discover in the various changes in the value of the aureus, beginning in the principate of Augustus, repeated efforts to improve the currency and adapt it to changing circumstances. And not only the internal mechanism, as it might be called, of a currency based upon a four-metal standard had to be adjusted, but also its outward relations to the local conditions and commercial relations of the tribute paying provinces.

5 It is not my purpose, however, to pursue consideration of the vicissitudes through which the gold coinage passed any further than, as already done, to point out the much greater probability that the occasional alterations in the aureus were due to rational measures to effect almost certainly necessary readjustments of the complex currency, than to the easy but questionable inference that the early emperors or corrupt officials surreptitiously reduced the weight of the gold coins for their own profit. It is not indispensable to the main purpose of this paper that the integrity of the imperial mint service be established, yet that proposition if established by facts, would at least make it clear that the debasement of the silver coinage in the principate of Nero was a measure dictated by statesmanship whose explanation was worth seeking, and not a scheme resorted to by a corrupt court and thus to be dismissed with appropriate execrations. Before the principate of Nero, remedies for currency difficulties were sought in modifications of the gold coins; while the silver, and of course the base metal coins,* were left untouched. But now, apparently in the year B. C. 62, a denarius of reduced weight, as already stated, was authorized, and there is every reason to believe that the new standard was authorized by law. So far as the gross weight of the silver piece struck at this time is concerned, had it been of pure silver the older ratio between gold and silver would have been restored and.old complications brought back. But I believe that we shall see another reason for the reduction in weight; and as to the renewal of currency difficulties those were effectually prevented by reducing the standard of fineness from approximately 990 to 850 thousandths of fine silver, which rendered the silver coins virtually subsidiary and, with the restrictions on the base metal coinage, thus practically introduced a single gold standard. To state some legitimate grounds for this debasement of the Roman silver coins is of course the chief purpose of this paper. More definitely than in the case of the gold coins the debasement of the silver currency in the principate of Nero has, without exception in so far as the writer knows, been pointed out as due to corrupt motives. This easy method of disposing of the question has been helped along somewhat by reference to the insurrection involving the monetarii in the time of Aurelian; for according to some of the writers (Suidas s. v. MovETaptot; Eutropius, IX: 14) the great army of mint employees and A.D- * The coinage of orichalcum and bronze was strictly controlled by the senate and the amount of such base coinage was so carefully limited to the needs of retail trade, that the limited volume can hardly have caused serious disturbance of the currency.

6 officials rose in rebellion when the emperor attempted to put down the systematic peculation long carried on by fraudulently debasing the coins and appropriating the bullion thus saved. But it is exceedingly doubtful if the late writers have preserved the correct explanation of the disturbance, and besides it is hardly safe to interpret events of the time of Nero by reference to transactions in the much later principate of Aurelian. Yet our modern writers seem to have taken the case as proved. Thus the generally accepted theory is that in order to refill the imperial treasury which Nero's follies and vices had depleted - the depletion also largely assumed - his government debased the silver coins by somewhat over 25% of their value, but still issued them at the same valuation as before, the fiscus realizing heavily on the transaction. M. Lenormant (La Monnaie dans L'Antiquite', III, p. 30) entertains no doubt as to the original ground for the change: Le nom seal (Nero) de l'auteur de ces alterations.... suffit pour en faire ressortir tn grand et precieux enseignement; and more recently, J. Hammer, in the Zeitschrift fir Numismatik, Bnd. XXVI, p. 95 attributes a quasi state of bankruptcy'at Rome to the prevailing luxury, to expensive foreign wars, and to the enormous cost of rebuilding the city following the conflagration in A. D. 64, and of course assumes that the debasement of the silver coinage was a fraudulent measure to assist the imperial finances. Over against the mournful moralizing of M. Lenormant may be placed the authoritative statement of Professor Bury, well supported too by later research, that: " The peculiarity of the principate of Nero was that it was marked by good government under a bad prince." In fact the accession of Nero found a body of trained experts in charge of all branches of the government, and they under the able and honorable ministerial direction of Seneca and Burrus assured to the empire an able administration in spite of the outrageous conduct of a degenerate emperor. And if it is improbable that the coinage did not suffer at the hands of the emperor's ministers in his behalf, it is the more probable that fraud was not practiced by subordinates in their own interest. As to the vast sums of money the emperor needed to carry out his plans for rebuilding Rome after the conflagration, which Herr Hammer mentions, that may be dismissed as a factor influencing the currency measures: the burning of Rome occurred in A. D. 64, the change in the currency in the year 61 or 62. Now, there is one consideration which would have made Nero's finance ministers pause before taking any measures calculated to reduce the actual value of the silver coins to a point below the valuation at

7 which they were issued, unless other and very important compensatory advantages were to be gained. For silver was the chief medium with which the provincial communities paid their annual tribute into the im-. perial fiscus, and to reduce the value of the denarius was to reduce at the same time the actual resources of the empire. Had the imperial revenues in tribute been payable only in gold, the debasement of the silver coinage could have wrought no harm to the fiscus, but since they were payable in any of the four metals then coined, the amounts, fixed in sesterces, would naturally be paid in the cheapest coin. Prof. Seeck has described with graphic vividness how in the time of Aurelian the imperial revenues were probably wiped out by this very process of debasing the silver coinage. But the measure was finally passed, evidently after mature deliberation. What, then, were the compensatory advantages the government expected? There is a good deal of evidence that the Roman empire, especially Rome itself and Italy, suffered from chronic money stringency during much of the first century of our era, and more in that period than in subsequent times. The financial disaster of 33 A. D. was made, much worse than it would have become if the normal supplies of currency had not been exhausted at the very incipiency of the increased demand, (hinc inopia rei monetariae, Tac. Ann. VI: 17), although it must be admitted that an abnormally large reserve supply of the precious metals would have been necessary to prevent widespread disturbance and ruin when a long neglected law pertaining to investments was suddenly enforced against capitalists. Even the large credits advanced to the embarrassed capitalists by the emperor failed to stay the disaster. But yet the most important feature of the panic in the mind of the historian was the scarcity of currency that it caused. More specific evidence of the proposition is again found in the principate of Tiberius, and is contained in a letter the emperor addressed to the senate in A. D. 22. In this document he deals severely with the excessive luxury and extravagance of the times, and makes a significant statement which is probably the real crux of the whole protest. He states: " For what am I first to begin with restraining and cutting down to the old standard?... The gold and silver plate? The marvels in bronze and painting? The apparel worn indiscriminately by both sexes and also the peculiar luxury of women by which, for the sake of jewels, our currency is diverted to foreign or even hostile nations?" (pecuniae nostrae ad externas aut hostilis nationes transferuntur, Tac. Ann. III, 53). There probably never was a sumptuary law that was based upon mere

8 sentiment against extravagance and luxury. Only some economic reason could justify an effort to limit personal expenditures. In this letter to the senate no other adequate reason is assigned by Tiberius for his severe arraignment of prevailing conditions than the economic one that Roman money was being exported to foreign countries in payment for luxuries. There was nothing new in the life of the Roman people at that time; Tiberius had known and lived amid the same luxury and extravagance much of his life, so that he was not likely to be aroused thereby to any sentiments of disapprobation. But the currency problems could make themselves felt, and ten years later they brought disaster. Again, at a later date, the elder Pliny bears testimony to the fact that the exportation of gold and silver from Rome to foreign nations was enormous. Owing to the small amount of her exportable products the empire, especially Italy, had to pay a heavy balance in cash on the extensive imports from foreign countries. This was particularly true of Italy, for many products from Alexandria and other cities of north Africa are found in the lists of exports from the empire; and other portions of the empire also had more to export than Italy had, while at the same time their demands for costly luxuries were smaller. Now, Pliny mentions the payments to India alone in settlement of the trade balance as amounting to 55,000,000* sesterces in cash annually; and if, as has been done, the oriental trade be estimated at 40% of the empire's total foreign commerce, then one would be justified in estimating at 100,000,000 sesterces the amount annually required to settle with the foreign merchants. Indeed, the very fact that Pliny mentions this heavy payment to the Orient and employs the word " drains," exhauriente, is in itself suggestive that he was dealing with a vital question of the day. Among the many causes that contributed to the depletion of the supplies of currency, three or four may be noted as being especially baneful. These were: (1) marked decrease in the supplies of the precious metals, due to decline both in the production of the mines and, an important source of silver for the Roman mint at a much earlier period, in the amount of foreign and provincial silver coins sent to Rome in payment of the tribute; (2) the enormous hoarding of coins for lack of deposit banks; and (3) the settlement of the already mentioned large annual trade balance against Rome which had to be met with cash. * Nat. Hist., VI: Digna res, hullo anno minus, HS. DL. imperi nostri exhauriente India et mercis remittente...

9 Against the untoward influences of the first factor there was little hope of relief. There was a marked decrease in the production of the older mines; and while new operations in southeastern Europe and elsewhere were yielding no mean volume of the precious metal, yet the increased consumption of the metal in the arts, to supply, among many other things, an enormous demand for silver plate, a necessity of an age which had no substitute besides porous terra cotta and unattractive bronze wares, and in the constantly increasing currency requirements of a vast empire which was at last enjoying remarkable peace and a rapid growth in civilization, had evidently outstripped the supply. For a long period Rome had received quantities of silver money in payment of the tribute; and a few instances which we have given us show that a heavy discount was levied on foreign moneys thus received, amounting in some instances to as much as 20% of their bullion value. But the stream of foreign currency toward Rome had ceased long before the middle of the first century of our era; for cessation of autonomous coinage in gold and silver followed soon after conquest, the circulation of the imperial currency rapidly spread to the remotest corners of the empire, and obligations to the imperial treasury were of course met with a money on which no discount could be levied. The extent to which the volume of currency was reduced by hoarding can hardly be realized at the present day; although we have even now, and in France within the past few months, frequent recurrences of acute monetary crises due to loss from circulation of colossal amounts of gold, the aggregate of the many thousands of small sums of cash that have been withdrawn from banks and hoarded in fear of impending political emergencies that might either impair the security of the banks or even but temporarily render deposits inaccessible. Deposit banks, including savings banks, were unknown to the Romans; only the investment banker had come into existence. Small savings, and even large sums of money temporarily freed from investment, were for safekeeping commonly put away in secret receptacles or buried in the earth; and one must multiply by thousands the apparently numerous hoards of ancient Greek and Roman coins found in late centuries and still coming to light with surprising frequency, some of which, like the Brescello hoard of 80,000 Roman aurei of the time of Caesar and the early years of Augustus, contained very substantial sums of money. For reasons that have been given and for still others that might be urged, it seems that the problem had for decades confronted the Roman financier of how to protect the supplies of currency against the import -

10 DEBASEMENT OF TIlE SILVER COINAGE UNDER NERO ers of costly luxuries and, without, perhaps, measuring the evil fully, against the practice of hoarding. At a later time the emperor Gratian tried in vain to protect the country's supplies of the precious metals by forbidding the diversion of gold, under any circumstances, to barbarians, his rescript apparently repeating similar instructions from earlier emperors (Cod. Just., VI, 63, 2). How early such efforts were made to restrain by force the export of currency is not known; we can be assured that the measure was ineffectual. The measures taken at this time, however, would be preventive and were the very ones that the most enlightened modern statesmanship approves of and puts into practice; and when the remedy applied is seen to have been correct, then one is inclined to believe that the correct diagnosis had preceded its application. The cure was found in reducing the bullion value of the silver coins below the valuation at which they were issued, thus rendering them subsidiary. So consistently is this policy followed by nearly all the countries of the world to-day, that the importance of its introduction in antiquity is apt to make too slight impression upon our minds, so much accustomed to the idea. Greek peoples had long been familiar with the idea of base metal token money, but not so the Roman citizen who believed that his bronze and brass coins were worth their face value as much as his gold coins, and would have raised a riot had he been convinced otherwise. To strike subsidiary silver coins at Rome was to break with the financial ideas rooted in three centuries of coinage in the precious metals as pure as the methods of refining could render them. The source of the suggestion which brought forth this epochal legislation can, with some degree of probability, be yet discerned. For nearly a century before the Neronian legislation there had been in circulation the vast quantities of silver denarii which Antony had struck in the Orient when preparing for the final struggle with Octavian. These well-known coins bear the names of the various legions whose officers had charge of the coinage. There is ample proof that these coins, having been assimilated to the imperial currency immediately after the battle of Actium, remained in constant circulation. This fact would be at once evident from the much abraded condition of so large a portion of the still abundant specimens, even if we did not have the other and more reliable evidence, which is that they are seldom found in the hoards laid down before Nero either in Italy and other portions of the empire or in foreign soil, as in India, where originated the foreign commerce of the republic and early empire. Hoards of the late republic and early empire, before the principate of Nero, sometimes include coins

11 of the third century B. C. and issues of the last century of the republic are apt to occur in large numbers, but the base coins of Antony do not often occur. The modern student of political economy understands of course that it was an instance of the operation of the Gresham Law, that short weight, overvalued coins will circulate, while the better, especially undervalued coins, are liable to be hoarded or even melted down for profit; and that currency phenomenon was not unknown to antiquity though the value of the facts may not have been so well utilized as in modern times. Now, the denarius of Antony's military coinage, as shown by a large number of specimens, weighed approximately 53 grains. The specimens examined gave an average of grains. Mr. Akerman gives the weight as 54 grains. Some of the specimens are of full weight, but they are rare; and even with the few full-weight pieces included the average weight proved to be less than 54 grains. The fineness of the pieces varies widely, Akerman reporting 850 thousandths fine silver, and Schiassi's assays ranging from 855 to 874 thousandths. The denarius of Nero, of reduced standard, weighs approximately 3.41 grams, or about 53 grains, and the amount of fine silver ranges from 840 to 860 in a thousand parts, or presenting an average of about 850 thousandths. The approximation of the standard of the debased Neronian silver coinage so closely to that of Antony's military issues in the Orient is striking indeed. If the coincidence only related to either the weight or fineness of the coins there would be little or no reason to suspect a connecting influence. But the harmony estabished in both these important features seem to me convincing that a valuable lesson had been learned from the behavior of Antony's debased coins, and that we have legitimate grounds for the inference that the Roman financiers, observing how the latter were neither exported nor hoarded, had finally reached the conclusion that by introducing the same standard in the imperial coinage it too would be protected against the forces that were always tending to restrict the volume of the currency. And furthermore the influence of some established sentiment, whether prejudice or popular favor, for the new silver coin must be assumed to explain the entire measure. For if it was intended to render the silver coins subsidiary as a scientific measure for the public benefit, or even if it be allowed that the coins were debased to secure large profits from recoinage, in either case the end would have been fully achieved by the introduction of the large percentage of alloy. To

12 DEBASEMENT OF THIE SILVER COINAGE UNDER NERO resort to the additional measure of reducing the weight was unnecessary; and for a people wholly unaccustomed to a token or subsidiary coinage, but who had from the first understood that the gold and silver pieces they used, and for that matter the bronze coins too, contained their full value in the metal of which they were made - for ministers of finance in such circumstances to introduce a lighter coin having the same valuation as the older and heavier piece long in circulation, would be manifestly ill-advised, unless there had been an educative influence at work and an object lesson, for the ignorant, to assure them that they were not being swindled by the new coinage, and for financial experts, as a guarantee of the soundness of the measure. The effect of the currency legislation in A. D. 61 or 62 was probably very marked, as a modern financier would readily assure us; and we have some slight indications that it was actually effective in the direction I have tried to show was desired. For instance Tacitus (Germ. 5), states that the Germans preferred the older Roman coins, those with the serrated edge and the biga type - pecuniam probant veterem et diu notam, serratos bigatosque -which is probably to be interpreted as including any of the earlier republican coins whose standard weight and fineness were beyond question, and excluding post-claudian coins. Again, in the several hoards found in India and catalogued by Mr. Edgar Thurston, Government Central Museum, Madras Coins, Catalogue No. 2, Roman, Indo -portuguese, and Ceylon, there is found an interruption of the series extending from A. D. 61 to 80, with the exception of specimens coined in 78, the only coins of Vespasian found in India. The coins of Nero catalogued by Mr. Thurston are nearly all early issues of that emperor, many having the " youthful head"; there are none of the reduced standard. In fact no silver coins of Nero are listed by Mr. Thurston, but that is also true of Caligula and Claudius; while he does list silver and also copper coins of other emperors, so that the payments to India were not made in gold alone. The evidence of these Indian hoards must of course be used guardedly. The absence of silver coins, or the comparatively small numbers of them in the few finds, is possibly due to conditions in India. But in any case the long interruption in the series following the new monetary legislation at Rome is certainly more than merely interesting, it must be very significant. Finally, the most important fact relating to the currency legislation under discussion, and a fact that virtually proves that the modifications were duly legalized, is that the succeeding emperors did not set it aside and restore the older standard. Vespasian, Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian

13 were all able and patriotic emperors, and almost certainly would some of them, especially Vespasian during his struggles with competitors and in making his position secure, have overturned any acts of the monstrous Nero that had proved harmful, rapacious and specially favorable to the emperor. The facts are that some of the successors, within a half century, took even greater liberties with the silver coins and debased them still further, a thing which within reasonable limits could be done with impunity since they were then subsidiary. Subsequently, of course, as is well known, the enormous seignorage on the coinage of silver proved too profitable, hence too tempting to weak and reckless emperors and even more reckless aspirants to the purple, and pure silver almost vanished from the coins issued as silver coins. Base coins were issued to increase the revenues, the revenues paid in turn with the same base coins continually decreased, until the finances of the empire collapsed. Apparently, however, the advantages of a subsidiary silver coinage to the empire as a whole, at the time far outweighed the losses that may have threatened the imperial treasury, and certainly did affect the revenues seriously in later centuries through payment of the tribute with coins of a reduced actual value. But just as the reduction of the weight of the fractional silver coins of the United States in 1853, by making their bullion value considerably less than the par value at which they were issued, rendered it unprofitable to export or melt down the Half-dollar, Quarter and Dime, and thus for the first time in the history of the country secured for the domestic trade a stable volume of small silver coins, by the same measures, I am convinced, the Roman financiers sought to protect the domestic trade of the empire against the blighting influence of an uncertain supply of currency; and thus this much decried debasement of the silver coins by Nero stands out as a measure of sound statesmanship. UNITED STATES MINT, PHILADELPHIIA, March 25, 1914.